The pitch for Eddie Vedder’s second solo album sounds like a gag from The Simpsons – the alt. rock icon ditches the guitars and performs a suite of romantic tunes on ukulele. It’s a daring move for sure, and one wonders how it will go over with the more rockist elements of the Pearl Jam fanbase. Not being a huge PJ fan to begin with, I wasn’t hugely put off by the prospect of Eddie ditching the stodgy rock formula, and even welcomed the prospect of him experimenting with such an unorthodox format.
Titled simply Ukulele Songs, this mix of covers and originals finds the singer paring his sound down to the essentials. The opening ‘Can’t Keep’ has him yodelling over a few basic strummed chords, while the following ‘Sleeping By Myself’ – which has a somewhat Hawaiian feel – sounds like something from the soundtrack of an Elvis movie, of all things.
Your reaction to ‘Without You’ will probably determine how you feel about Ukulele Songs as a whole. To be honest, if this had been given the full Pearl Jam treatment of overblown guitars and bombastic vocals, I’d probably be wincing as I listened. For me, Pearl Jam were always a tad unimaginative musically; bar the occasional scorching rocker such as ‘Do The Evolution’, there is a premium on melodic and lyrical finesse, qualities one readily associates with their fellow Seattle icon Kurt Cobain – who correctly asserted that, with In Utero, Nirvana had “challenged their audience in a way Pearl Jam never would.”
Indeed, heretical a statement as it may be in some quarters, I believe that the rise to prominence of the more dour groups in the grunge firmament – PJ, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden etc. – was a musical cul de sac, to which Britpop was a necessary and welcome response. Anyway, the fact that on a song like ‘Without You’, Vedder does something as unexpected as sing a lovelorn ballad whilst accompanying himself on ukulele is a rather enjoyable departure from the stadium rock playbook, and it’s this element of surprise that makes Ukulele Songs such an enjoyable, if admittedly uneven, listen.
Following the romantic sweet harmonies and plaintive lyrics of ‘More Than You Know’, the album’s first venture into feel-good (or at least feel-reasonably-okay) territory arrives with the up-tempo, toe-tapping rhythm of ‘Goodbye’. Although even here, as the title indicates, there is a bittersweet feel to proceedings, as Vedder laments that “My dreams suddenly seem empty... I know that this is goodbye.”
In fact, the singer – not a man noted for his light-hearted lyrical touch – is in particularly melancholic mood throughout much of Ukulele Songs, as several of the titles (‘Broken Heart’, ‘Longing To Belong’ etc.) indicate. Nowhere is this more evident than on ‘Sleepless Nights’, a collaboration with Glen Hansard, with whom Vedder hooked up through mutual friends. In the normal course of events, the idea of Eddie Vedder and Glen Hansard duetting on a ukulele song would be very far from my idea of musical nirvana, but somehow, the tune’s sweetly melodic feel and understated delivery make it work.
Wracked though much of the record is, Eddie at least seems to have found some measure of peace by the end, with ‘Tonight You Belong To Me’ – a duet with Cat Power – suggesting that, for once, love hasn’t torn him apart again. Overall, while Ukulele Songs is far from the best album I’ve heard this year, it is well worth dipping into.